


Redrawn

by montparnasse



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Noncanonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/montparnasse/pseuds/montparnasse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best intentions of seventeen-year-old boys were made to be shattered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redrawn

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the kink meme requesting first times of a different sort—specifically, first kills!
> 
> Everyone has that one character (or twelve) they want to roll up in a blanket burrito and feed them soup and brush their hair and snap at all the things that hurt them, and man, do I ever feel that way about Carver.

When Carver is seventeen, he has something of a philosophy, one of those quick-tempered, knife’s-edge things young men are prone to espouse; something that says, in no uncertain terms, that the moment you fuck with his family is the moment Carver Hawke collects your head. Or your arm. Or your feet. Whichever part of you he happens to cleave off and keep for himself, probably mounted on the wall where he can reminisce with that nice half-drunk bottle of brandy he keeps under his bed, the one he’s not supposed to have.

And when Carver is seventeen, his whole philosophy collapses in on itself one afternoon on the Imperial Highway, shot to rubble all across its jagged, trembling fault line. They’re just outside of town with a basket of apples and Garrett going on and _on_ about some fancy spell he’s taught himself, why isn’t Carver paying attention to him, he’s never seen this one before (he has). He’s carrying a few yards of fabric under his arm for their mother, because running errands for your mother is very manly and because Carver is forever straining the stitches of his tunics and trousers, growing as tall and spindly as a sunflower only without the grace, he thinks. He wishes he could be more like Garrett, coming into everything like the wiry slow-burner he is, wearing his patched-up socks like kings wear gold and furs instead of waking up in the mornings with no coat to fit his shoulders and toes too big for his boots. (Carver always grew faster than his mother’s stitches could keep him sewn in. Carver will never stop growing up too fast.)

Garrett says something obnoxious and Carver laughs in spite of himself, seventeen and brash, a boy with a half-dreamed future in the creases of his calloused palms. Garrett elbows him and he elbows back and then Garrett does it again, harder. They laugh. Then it hits him from behind, because life is underhanded that way.

“Apostate,” says the man—highwayman, thief, soldier, off-duty Templar, Carver doesn’t know and he supposes it doesn’t matter. He stalks toward them; rather, he stalks toward _Garrett_ , who has never been anything like subtle with that staff on his back and the tiny flames he’s crafting into crisscross braids down his wrist, looking back at the stranger with surprise and something not unlike a challenge on his narrow, harsh-eyed face. “Who let you out of your cage, _apostate_?” He spits out the word like it’s tar on his tongue, fuming, furious, and all at once he’s coming at Garrett with his sword half-drawn, and Carver knows what to do here, knows just where to hit and how. He knows.

He _knows_.

It’s so much faster than he ever thought it would be, just one quick, broad stroke of his sword and then there’s blood on his tunic, his hands, his shoes, hot and wet and heavy with the thick iron-wrought smell of dying. There are words he doesn’t hear, and then there are none; there is a blade that isn’t his own lying at his feet, clean, unused, and a man opening and closing his mouth, voiceless where Carver cut the words right out from under him. A man who might have had a family. A man who might have believed he was right, as Carver believes he is right, as Carver _knows_ he is right. A man whose friends will wonder where he is when he fails to join them at the tavern a few days from now. A son, a friend, a father, a lover. A man who was, once upon a time, as young as Carver.

Garrett is saying something that might be his name but he can’t hear, not around the rush of blood in his ears and the way the ground is swelling under his feet, dragging him to his knees. It was so easy. A flick of his wrist, one smooth motion, like cutting up a goat for his mother but not even as difficult, not as methodical and here he is, kneeling on the side of the road and retching up everything he’s eaten for a week and what feels like the red, beating flesh of his heart.

“Carver,” Garrett is saying, hoarse, stern in a way that reminds him of their father and soft in a way that makes Carver want to curl into him and never get up again. “Carver. Come on. Up you get.”

He stands, Garrett still rubbing his back, reaching around his waist to keep him up and steady. They take a step together and he clenches his jaw tight, clenches his fists so they don’t shake so badly. The world is sudden and strange, so large, unfamiliar, and his brother is holding him up again and this isn’t how it was supposed to go, not how it was supposed to be, nothing is ever how it was supposed to be.

When they get home, it is Garrett who tells their mother Carver isn’t feeling well and pushes him into the bedroom they’ve shared since the day Carver was born. It is Garrett who sits him down, gets his boots off, helps him clean under his fingernails and doesn’t say anything because there is nothing to say and too much. Bethany doesn’t ask him anything, because Bethany—his twin, his baby sister, his left arm, sweeter half of himself—has never needed to ask him a thing in her life. It is Garrett who rests his head on Carver’s shoulder, who doesn’t have an answer. And it is Garrett, dark-eyed and weary, who sits up with him all night and shares the bottle of half-drunk brandy Carver isn’t supposed to have.

But in the morning, it is Carver who washes his sword and sharpens his heart before his brother has even turned over in his bed. It is Carver who stitches himself into the skin of a warrior and grits his teeth so the threads don’t come out. It is Carver who looks at Lothering and guards his borders , home and world and family and _life_ , the only way he can. And it is Carver who laces up his own boots before he goes, the soles stained a bold, incriminating red.


End file.
